- Food, especially palm butter and pineapple
- The fantastic West African music especially “Yori, Yori”.
- The glorious sunshine that glows like a balloon in the sky at night
- Shaking hands with everyone and anyone we meet
- … and doing the African ‘snap’
- Getting a high five on the way back from Communion
- People remembering your name
- People getting your name wrong in a friendly way
- People looking delighted to see you even though they’ve only seen you once before
- Patience and Kindness sitting next to each other in class
- … just behind Comfort
- Watching football
- Talking about football
- The Virtuous Women’s Multipurpose Collective
- Walking round inside the President’s Palace on an impromptu visit
- Visiting Guinea without a visa or a passport
- How beautifully mathematical the Palm trees are as well as all the amazing trees in general
- Sitting in a gushing waterfall, dancing next to the water fall, drinking Club Beer next to the waterfall and dancing to African Gospel music next to that same waterfall
- Messages of (Spirit) inspiration… on the bumpers of yellow taxis
- The warm welcomes
- The amazing people
- The tropical fruit (including Solero fruit)
- People being shy but never embarrassed
- Everyone wanting to be your friend, including those you shake hands with on the street
- The spontaneous harmonies that pop up as kids sing in class
- The silent conversations (with smiles and head nods) with people you pass on the street
- Putting ‘o’ on the end of words and sentences
- Being introduced to people with brand new – and sometimes peculiar – names wherever we go
- Being told by people they heard you on the radio
- … and they remember what you said
- Club beer
- Sugar cane
- Having our own driver
- Having these particular drivers – Simeon, Flomo, Jimmy and Bility…
- Dancing at any given opportunity
- Teaching Africans to dance
- Orange Fanta that’s deliciously different to our own Orange Fanta
- Driving along with the windows open taking in brisk air (and being able to smell lots of different kinds of foods)
- New sights everywhere we drive
- People being out and together all of the time, day and night
- Seeing wild fires at the side of the road
- Beesie the dog and his fox-like friend
- The massive “No Lemon” sign marking the garage which indicates that they don’t sell lemons
- Bizarre Liberian advertising and billboards
- The fact that people still say Happy New Year to you, even though we’re two months into the year…
- …and also that people still have their Christmas decorations up
The country itself – we’ll never forget our first trip to Africa